As semiconductor technology continues to scale, the supply or operating voltage of the integrated circuit becomes lower and lower. The nominal supply voltage has decreased from 5V to 3.3V to 1.8V and below. Transistors with operating voltages of 1.1V are currently being developed.
As the supply voltage decreases it becomes increasingly important to limit the voltage swing on the supply voltage lines. This is due to the fact that smaller voltage swings can cause unacceptable amounts of current leakage and even unintentionally switch the state of the transistor. Voltage swing may be minimized by providing capacitance on the power supply. Typically this is accomplished with off-chip decoupling capacitors. As the amount of voltage swing that can be tolerated is reduced, more and more decoupling capacitance is required.